ACCORDING to a longstanding metaphysical tradition, actuality is prior—and in some ways superior—to possibility. From Aristotle to Hegel, the exceptions to this fundamental belief are fairly rare. But there is a marked trend in post- Hegelian thought to undermine this traditional priority, with

Theodor W. Adorno representing an important line of attack.1 Volume 1, Issue 1, March 2016

In this vein, Jay Bernstein remarks that, for Adorno,

“lodged somewhere between logical and actual possibility,” there is something that is “neither fully actual nor fully non- actual.”2 This is an extremely important insight into Adorno’s thoughts, but one that neither Bernstein nor Adorno makes Adorno’s Modal Utopianism: fully explicit. What, then, is Adorno’s view of possibility and what is the modal status of what he calls “difference with Possibility and Actuality in respect to what exists”3 (die Differenz vom Bestehenden)? The Adorno and Hegel answers to these questions will involve showing how Adorno’s notion of utopian ‘difference’ relies, crucially, upon a critique of the defective metaphysical thesis concerning the priority of actuality, which finds its highest expression in Hegel’s thought. Succinctly put, the trouble is that, “according to Hegel’s Iain Macdonald distinction between abstract and real possibility, only something that has become actual is possible. This kind of philosophy sides with the big guns. It adopts the judgement of Université de Montréal [email protected]

1 Other lines of attack are to be found, for example, in the works of Herbert Marcuse and of Ernst Bloch, but also in those of Martin Heidegger. 2 Jay M. Bernstein, Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 418, 435. See too Deborah Cook, “From the Actual to the Possible: Nonidentity Thinking,” Constellations, vol. 12, no. 1 (2005). 3 Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (London: Routledge, 1973), 313; Theodor W. Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Gretel Adorno, Susan Buck-Morss, and Klaus Schultz, 20 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1997), 6:308. 2 | Adorno’s Modal Utopianism

an actuality that always destroys what could be different.”4 apparent alternative. The task of philosophy is then to critique Understanding this claim begins with Adorno’s critique of and unmask the general and particular structures of the Hegel’s notion of totality. ideological fiction of the ‘force of the whole’ in such a way as to open up the possibility of determinate alternatives. This The Whole and the ‘More’ possibility of determinate negation, says Adorno, is utopia, “the utopia of the whole truth [der ganzen Wahrheit], which is still to The frequently cited rallying cry of Adorno’s critique of be actualized.”10 Hegel—“The whole is the untrue”5—means first of all that the claim to spirit being a whole, a “system of totality,”6 is However, this reference to ‘the utopia of the whole untenable. More precisely, as Adorno says elsewhere, any truth’ brings with it its own set of problems: are we not “affirmative and self-assured reference” to such a whole is replacing one fiction with another, one telos with another, and “fictitious.”7 However, if reference to the whole is fictitious, it one whole with another that would supersede or somehow is not simply because the Hegelian whole is an unattainable detach itself from the whole of which Hegel speaks? Adorno metaphysical dream. More concretely, it is because our vision assures us that this is not the case. His utopianism “does not of the whole has become the socially necessary illusion mean to suggest a second, secret world which is to be opened (gesellschaftlich notwendiger Schein) of a thoroughly up through an analysis of appearances”11—i.e., there is no antagonistic society.8 As Adorno puts it: “The force of the ‘other’ world than this one, other than this untrue whole. On whole…is not a mere fantasy on the part of spirit; it is the force the other hand, if Adorno can invoke the idea of a ‘utopia of of the real web of illusion in which all individual existence the whole truth’ in opposition to the Hegelian whole, then we remains trapped.”9 The whole is thus the web of actuality clearly need to rethink how we conceive the whole of actuality understood as the sum of repressive forces to which there is no itself. Certainly, this desire to reconceive actuality is a pillar of Adorno’s thought insofar as it corresponds, for example, to an

4 Theodor W. Adorno, “The Experiential Content of Hegel’s Philosophy,” attempt “to imagine the whole as something that could be 12 in Hegel: Three Studies, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge, MA: The MIT utterly different.” But this poses a particular problem of Press, 1993), 83; Adorno, GS, 5:320. interpretation: there is no ‘other’ world than this one, yet we 5 Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott (London: must imagine the “utterly different.” What can this mean? Verso, 1978), §29, 50; Adorno, GS, 4:55. 6 G. W. F. Hegel, The Science of Logic, trans. George Di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 749; G. W. F. Hegel, Werke, 20 10 Adorno, “The Experiential Content of Hegel’s Philosophy,” 88; Adorno, vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969–1971), 6:569. GS, 5:325. 7 Adorno, “The Experiential Content of Hegel’s Philosophy,” 87; Adorno, 11 Theodor W. Adorno, “The Actuality of Philosophy,” in The Adorno GS, 5:324. Reader, ed. Brian O’Connor, trans. Benjamin Snow (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 31; 8 See, for example, Adorno, “Aspects of Hegel’s Philosophy,” 31; Adorno, Adorno, GS, 1:335. GS, 5:277. 12 Rainer Traub and Harald Wieser, eds., Gespräche mit Ernst Bloch 9 Ibid., 87 / 5:324. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1975), 61.

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Horkheimer’s historicism, whose participative structure One possibility is that this difference is inscribed in ensures its commonness and bindingness for all. Horkheimer’s thought itself, in the methods and practices by which we come dialectic is thereby ‘unclosed’ in the specific sense of being to grips with actuality. One way to put this would be to suggest open to truths different than those we now know, just because that Adorno’s dialectic is not as ‘closed’ as Hegel’s. In any case, truth is not located in static actuality, but in the historically this is how Max Horkheimer handles the teleological question variable requirements and determinations of the nexus of in Hegel. In an essay whose main theses are taken as read by activity that defines it. Not only must thought think thought’s Adorno, Horkheimer will say that the dialectic is to be own historicality and finitude, but we must understand understood, contra Hegel, as fundamentally unclosed actuality itself as an active and self-defining network of beliefs (unabgeschlossen).13 He writes: “An isolated and conclusive and practices that includes both the hypotheses to be tested [abschlußhafte] theory of actuality [Wirklichkeit] is completely and the criterion of testing—all of which is encapsulated by unthinkable.”14 That is, actuality cannot be seen as an what Horkheimer calls human activity.17 It is through the internally self-justifying system of beliefs and practices—a constant revision of truth on the basis of historically informed world complete unto itself. But how exactly are we to theory and practice that actuality’s more repressive currents understand this ‘open’ actuality to which Horkheimer seems to can be overcome. There is no ‘other world’ than this one, but refer? Or to put it another way, if the dialectic is unclosed, its defects can instruct us on how to transform it for the then what exactly is it open to, or what does it open onto? betterment of all. Here, Horkheimer’s answer is less provocative than Adorno’s will be. The dialectic aims at objective truth, says Horkheimer, Similarly, Adorno’s ‘whole truth’ does not correspond where this truth is not that to which a proposition corresponds, to some ignorant, static ideal to which thinking will one day do but that which “real events and human activity”15 produce: “to justice. In this, Adorno’s view concurs with Horkheimer’s. If the degree that the knowledge gained from perception and the whole is untrue, it is because thinking cannot ‘close’ the inference, methodical inquiry and historical events, daily work circle of the real once and for all. The real must rather instruct and political struggle, meets the test of the available means of cognition, it is the truth.”16 This claim is the basis of 17 In this sense, Horkheimer’s view is consistent with that of Hegel in the introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit, while remaining true to Marx’s second thesis on Feuerbach: “The question whether human thinking can reach objective 13 Max Horkheimer, “On the Problem of Truth,” in Between Philosophy truth—is not a question of theory but a practical question. In practice man must and Social Sciences: Selected Early Writings, ed. G. Frederick Hunter, Matthew S. prove the truth, that is, actuality and power [Wirklichkeit und Macht], this-sidedness Kramer, and John Torpey, trans. Maurice Goldbloom and G. Frederick Hunter of his thinking. The dispute about the actuality or non-actuality of thinking— (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993), 189; Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte thinking isolated from practice—is a purely scholastic question.” (Karl Marx, “Theses Schriften, 19 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1988), 3:295, for example. 14 on Feuerbach,” in Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, edited and Ibid., 189 / 3:392. translated by Loyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967; 15 Ibid., 190 / 3:293. reprint, with corrections, Hackett, 1997), 401; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 16 Ibid., 192 / 3:295. Werke, 43 vols. (Berlin: Dietz-Verlag, 1956), 3:5, cf. 3:533.)

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thought as to where to invest its creative powers. However, for Adorno, the whole is false not merely because truth is the result of the historically changing nature of real events and Hegel’s Theory of Actuality human activity (in Horkheimer’s sense); it is also because the world is not everything that is the case.18 As Adorno puts it in one For Hegel, actuality and possibility are moments of the of several similar passages: “Undeniably, being is not simply absolute—the whole—understood as pure self-manifestation. the epitome of what is, of what is the case. With this anti- Or, to put it another way, the absolute’s self-manifestation positivistic insight we do justice to the concept’s surplus over (i.e., in the occurrence of real events in history) is nothing facticity. No concept would be thinkable, indeed none would be other than the self-movement of actuality as returning to itself possible without the ‘more’ [das Mehr] that makes a language through its self-determination as possibility. In fact, according of language.”19 to Hegel, the dialectical identity of possibility and actuality gives rise to a concept of absolute actuality that contains (in sich It is this ‘more’ that will help us to determine and enthält) all possibility: “whether this or that is possible or clarify the nature of the opposition that Adorno sets up impossible depends on the content,” says Hegel, “i.e., on the between his own utopianism and the false Hegelian whole. In a totality of the moments of actuality, an actuality which, in the word, the Adornian dialectic is open not simply because it is unfolding of its moments, proves to be necessity.”20 somehow more historical or less teleological than Hegel’s or because it refuses to be a closed system of totality. The This unfolding and its necessity are described in Adornian dialectic is open because it is marked by an greatest detail in the Science of Logic, with some interesting and irreducible ‘more,’ by a surplus that prevents the whole from critical points added in the corresponding passages of the closing and the Hegelian circle from returning into itself. This Encyclopædia. But in every passage and on every level, the ‘more’ is possibility—but not just any possibility: it is a type of traditional priority of actuality over possibility is reaffirmed, possibility that Hegel’s philosophy does not and cannot admit. though the detail and the terminology are thoroughly modern. The question arises, then, as to how Adorno’s notions of The core definition of actuality is succinctly given in the actuality and possibility differ from Hegel’s. greater Logic: “what is actual can act [was wirklich ist, kann wirken]; something announces its actuality by what it produces.”21 What this means, first and foremost, is not that actuality is the mere sum of what is immediately present, but 18 Adorno’s many critical references to the first line of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus—“The world is everything that is the case” (Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist)—are meant precisely to adumbrate the openness of the dialectical view that he 20 G. W. F. Hegel, The Encyclopædia Logic: Part I of the Encyclopædia of defends. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C. K. Philosophical Sciences, with the Zusätze, trans. T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and Ogden, Bilingual (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), proposition 1. H. S. Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991), §143, Zusatz, 217; Hegel, Werke, 8:284. 19 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 106; Adorno, GS, 6:112. 21 Hegel, Science of Logic, 482; Hegel, Werke, 6:208.

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rather that it is self-producing because it is always “full of other. And conversely, since its moment of in-itselfness content.”22 In other words, real actuality is always a determinate thereby sublates itself at the same time, it becomes 25 actuality that contains equally real possibilities that in turn actuality, hence the moment which it likewise already is. become actual in their own right, just because they are the true In this movement, there is evidently a kind of vanishing content, the in-itself, of this actuality. But this content, which (Verschwinden), using up (Verzehren), or collapsing is the condition of possibility of a nascent but not yet existing (Zusammenfallen) of possibility, but with neither gain nor loss new actuality, is thereby none other than the selfsame actuality because real possibility is just latent actuality, i.e., the existing seen as a totality expressive of a “complete circle of conditions of a nascent actuality that will in turn be the real conditions”23—a living whole that drives its own development possibility of yet another expression of actuality. and external, historical transformation. Real possibility is therefore only formally distinct from actuality; or, as Hegel On a higher level of analysis, this dialectical movement puts it, “it is real in so far as it is itself also actuality.”24 of actuality and possibility, or the counterstroke (Gegenstoß) of

the one in the other, is also considered utterly necessary. The dialectical sleight of hand that establishes the Hegel’s reasoning on this point is deceptively simple: the circle identity of actuality and possibility and, more importantly, of conditions is always such that it will give rise to the their self-enclosed, self-reproducing totality, is an admittedly determinate actuality to which it corresponds: “Hence what is attractive presentation of the internal, logical relation of what really possible can no longer be otherwise; under the given is and what can be. On this view, everything depends upon the conditions and circumstances, nothing else can follow. Real definition of existing actuality as a “complete circle of possibility and necessity are, therefore, only apparently conditions” that implicitly defines an other actuality not yet distinguished.”26 Of course, in terms of content, the dialectic is existing. That is, the complete circle of conditions is the middle bound to contingency, in the sense that the actuality from term in the analysis. Actuality is a complete circle of which possibility proceeds always has its ground in another, circumstances; but these are nothing other than conditions for i.e., in a former actuality that provided the conditions of its another actuality, which is to be seen as really possible in emergence. Real necessity therefore appears only as relative relation to real actuality. Therefore, in respect of this complete necessity—i.e., relative to given conditions and open to circle of conditions, actuality and possibility are one: unforeseen and unforeseeable circumstances. But this

openness too is an illusion of history, because the ultimate as [actuality’s] immediate concrete existence, the circle of conditions, sublates itself, it makes itself into the in-itselfness movement of contingency, in its very becoming in time, blindly [Ansichsein] which it already is, namely the in-itself of an obeys the dialectical law of actuality. The stroke and counterstroke of actuality and possibility make up the very 22 Ibid., 482 / 6:208. 23 Hegel, Encyclopædia Logic, §148, 224; Hegel, Werke, 8:292. 25 Ibid., 484 / 6:210-11. 24 Hegel, Science of Logic, 484; Hegel, Werke, 6:210. 26 Ibid., 484 / 6:211.

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form of historical determinateness and contingency. All basic truth about necessity: that we are often blindly subject to existence, in spite of its infinite diversity, dependency, and it. The fact that we often mistake what history ‘ought’ to seeming irrationality, unfolds following the same movement. produce is just “the one-sided form of reflection-into- The “absolute restlessness of the becoming [of actuality and another,”31 or, in other words, it is the unfortunate result of possibility] is contingency,”27 as Hegel says at the beginning of the narrowness that marks individual consciousness. the analysis.28 At the end, the claim is firmer: “It is necessity itself, therefore, that determines itself as contingency: in its Adorno and the ‘Ought’ being it repels itself from itself [sich von sich abstößt], in this very repelling [Abstoßen] has only returned to itself, and in this It is Adorno’s opposition to this definition of actuality turning back which is its being has repelled itself from itself.”29 as a self-enclosed, self-reproducing totality that allows us to Something possible becomes actual; yet while that specific grasp the real meaning of his own ‘unclosed’ dialectic. In a actualization may not be necessary (it may be contingent, i.e., word, if the world is not all that is the case in a positivistic dependent upon some circumstance), it is nevertheless sense, nor even self-enclosed, self-manifesting actuality in a determining and shapes what is now possible. The contingent Hegelian sense, it is because “what is, is more than it is”32 in event takes the form of the actual as the circle of conditions, the sense of being marked by a type of possibility that and of the possible as what actuality contains within itself. And corresponds neither to mere formal possibility, nor to Hegelian so, once again, inner becomes outer; and outer, inner. The real possibility. Or, to phrase it differently, Adorno seems to dialectical identity of possibility and actuality is reaffirmed. claim that there is a kind of ‘middle’ possibility that lies between the possibilities that actuality sanctions, and those But what then of possibilities that do not become that are abstract, formal, or absurd.33 actual, such as suppressed or blocked possibilities? Or actualities that appear not to conform to their prior circle of In Hegel’s thought, the category of formal possibility conditions (‘surprise’ actualities)? On Hegel’s view, the first are comprises the ‘unreal’ possibilities of the ‘merely’ possible (e.g., merely formal, impotent possibilities, or the monstrosity of an the sultan may become the pope or the moon may fall to essence to which no being corresponds.30 As for the second, earth34). However, along with absurd possibilities, it is also in ‘surprise’ actualities are simply a confirmation of the most this category that Hegel places those possibilities that merely ‘ought’ to be but that are too impotent, with regard to the 27 Ibid., 481 / 6:206. circle of conditions, to become actual: such a possibility is “only 28 Whereas in the previous section of the greater Logic contingency is defined merely as that which may or may not be, it is here defined as dependence upon another, i.e., non-self-sufficiency or dependence upon circumstances. 31 Hegel, Encyclopædia Logic, §145, Zusatz, 218; Hegel, Werke, 8:285. 29 Ibid., 481 / 6:214. 32 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 161; Adorno, GS, 6:164. 33 30 “Essence itself is only a moment and … has no truth without being.” Compare Bernstein, Adorno, 418. Ibid., 479 / 6:204. 34 Hegel, Encyclopædia Logic, §143, Zusatz, 216; Hegel, Werke, 8:283.

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a possible and the ought-to-be [das Sollen] of the totality of obvious possibility of fulfilment and its equally obvious form.”35 As such, the ‘ought’ cannot rightly be said to be part of impossibility by identifying with the impossibility, by the living whole, which qua whole is fulfilled in and as appropriating it. To use [Anna] Freud’s terminology, they “identify with the aggressor” and say that something cannot actuality. In other words, according to Hegel, what merely ought be [nicht sein soll], when they know full well that it ought to to be but is not, is not a true (i.e., real) possibility at all but be [daß es gerade ja sein sollte], though it is withheld from rather an illusion—not the real in-itself of something not yet them through a bewitchment of the world.37 actual, but in truth a straightforward impossibility, for otherwise it would be actual. As Hegel puts it: “possibility [in For some, the denial of what merely ought to be and its the form of the bare ‘ought’] is contradiction, or it is apparent metaphysical legitimacy may seem readily impossibility.”36 In this way, actuality stands higher than comprehensible—but this comprehension depends upon an possibility, which it either contains and actualizes or condemns acceptance of the notions of real and formal possibility as as an irrational ‘ought.’ Hegel (and much of the metaphysical tradition) understands them. On this view, the denial of what ought to be is just real Hegel’s critique of the ‘ought’ (das Sollen) is well known. actuality manifesting itself as an absolute rational norm by Less well known, however, is Adorno’s defence of it. The root which possibilities can be judged. In other words, if real of the matter is that there are two kinds of ‘ought’ that need to possibility is reduced to what is always already contained be distinguished: the ‘ought’ of formal possibility—the within real actuality, then whatever does not fit the norm will fantastic wish that Hegel rightly ridicules—and the ‘ought’ inevitably appear to be ‘impossible.’ But there is an untenable that society suppresses in order to maintain itself and the presupposition at work in the apparent innocence of the illusion of wholeness, i.e., of its completeness as regards the simple distinction between formal and real possibility: that the possible. This distinction appears most clearly when the false mere reproduction of actuality (if that is what actuality reality of a socially necessary illusion blocks emancipatory produces) is necessary, just because real actuality is always the transformation, which is then written off as a vain fantasy, expression of what is really possible, understood as an actual just because actuality does not produce the transformation. On and complete circle of conditions that formerly existed. this point, Adorno has the following to say (special attention should be paid to the juxtaposition of the two uses of the It is precisely this presupposition that Adorno modal verb sollen): implicitly refuses in the passages just cited. For him, the distinction between the ‘mere’ ought and what ‘really’ ought to [the conformist tendency to deny the possibility of what be, but nevertheless is not, is a critical one. It is this ‘emphatic’ ought to be] stems from the fact that people are only ought (a ‘real’ ought that complements ‘real’ possibility) that capable of dealing with the contradiction between the has no place in traditional theories of possibility, least of all

35 Hegel, Science of Logic, 479; Hegel, Werke, 6:204. 36 Ibid., 479 / 6:204. 37 Traub and Wieser, eds., Gespräche mit Ernst Bloch, 61.

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Hegel’s. As Adorno puts it: “Negative dialectics penetrates its blocked by possibility. However, if we admit the ‘middle’ hardened objects via possibility—the possibility of which the possibility or the emphatic ‘ought’ that we have been objects’ actuality has cheated them, but which is nevertheless discussing, then the contradiction disappears. The passage can visible in each one.”38 For Hegel, such a notion of ‘negative’ then be understood as follows: “[Utopia], the consciousness of possibility—i.e., a possibility of which we are “cheated” or [emphatic] possibility, … is blocked by [so-called real “deprived”—is utterly unthinkable or sheer nonsense. possibility], never by immediate actuality [which is contingent]; that is why [what ought to be] seems abstract in Adorno’s counter-claim is that our vision of possibility the midst of what exists.” In other words, the real possibilities is structured in such a way as to block possibilities other than of the existing order are seen as total and exhaustive only those sanctioned by circumstance, i.e., possibilities whose because we are accustomed to regarding self-reproducing reality is sabotaged precisely by the metaphysical dogma of actuality as an absolute norm. But if we refuse this actuality as a self-enclosed, self-confirming totality. A few metaphysical prejudice and admit the category of blocked more examples will bring out the alternative view of modality possibility situated between familiar real possibility and the that Adorno has in mind. First, the well-known and apparently formal possibility, then actuality opens itself up to the contradictory final lines of the introduction to Negative different, and thereby frees itself from the tyranny of the Dialectic, where Adorno writes: same, of self-reproducing actuality.

[Utopia], the consciousness of possibility, clings to both A similar problem of interpretation arises at the concrete and the undisfigured. Utopia is blocked by the end of Lecture 17 of Einführung in die Dialektik: what is possible, never by immediate actuality; that is why what is possible seems abstract in the midst of what exists. It is also part and parcel of the historical dialectic that Inextinguishable colour comes from non-being. Thought, what appears anachronistic may in some circumstances a piece of existence, serves non-being, which thought have greater actuality [Aktualität] than what may seem, on reaches, however negatively.39 the surface of things, entitled to lay claim to greater actuality, in the sense of functioning within existing The apparent contradiction lies in the way utopia, structures.40 which is supposed to be the consciousness of possibility, is also

38 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 52; Adorno, GS, 6:62. 39 “[Utopie], das Bewußtsein der Möglichkeit, haftet am Konkreten als 40 “Aber ich glaube, daß es zur geschichtlichen Dialektik auch hinzugehört, dem Unentstellten. Es ist das Mögliche, nie das unmittelbar Wirkliche, das der daß unter Umständen gerade das Anachronistische eine größere Aktualität hat als Utopie den Platz versperrt; inmitten des Bestehenden erscheint es darum als abstrakt. das, was seiner eigenen Oberfläche nach, nämlich im Sinn des Funktionierens Die unauslöschliche Farbe kommt aus dem Nichtseienden. Ihm dient Denken, ein innerhalb der gegebenen Apparaturen, die größere Aktualität beanspruchen darf.” Stück Dasein, das, wie immer negativ, ans Nichtseiende heranreicht.” Ibid., 56-57 / Theodor W. Adorno, Einführung in die Dialektik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp GS 6:66. Verlag, 2010), 261.

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This passage, like the previous one, at first seems Adorno’s writings, a critique which takes aim at the convoluted and perhaps even confused. But the appearance of metaphysical prejudice to which Marxism’s emphasis on confusion is utterly dispelled just as soon as we see that there determinate praxis often blinded it: the prejudice according to is a double modal structure in play, hinging on a special kind of which present and future actuality form a closed whole defined “anachronism” (which Marx was probably the first to diagnose by the economically determined possibilities of the present in the introduction to his critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of (e.g., the apparently necessitarian character of the Communist Right41). Actuality is not reducible to what merely appears to Manifesto’s ‘grave-digger’ argument).43 At root, this prejudice is have actuality, namely, the administered world and its just the social and political manifestation of what is taken to inherent, self-reproducing real possibilities; it can also be the be the metaphysical nature of actuality, which Hegel’s theory manifestation of the blocked possibility of an other actuality, of of possibility defines and defends. another future, that has “greater actuality.” In other words, actuality here again expresses an emphatic ought that is Adorno, on the other hand, offers us an implicit suppressed by what so-called real actuality makes possible. philosophy of possibility that challenges the prevailing view. “Anachronism” names this difference or this gap: the time of The possible is to be measured not merely positively in terms actuality and its self-reproduction versus the time of blocked of what already exists, but also negatively—in terms of the possibility and of an other future. difference from actuality that actuality itself emphatically suggests in the form of an ‘ought’ that is not reducible to Other examples include Adorno’s critique of popular formal possibility. Perhaps the simplest example in Adorno’s psychology, which, he says, standardizes normal and abnormal writings would be the demand “that no-one should [soll] go behaviour and so reduces human possibility to schemata, hungry anymore.”44 The technical means to eliminate hunger thereby sacrificing the process of dialectical experience to are available here and now, but at the same time the current “ready-made enlightenment,”42 i.e., illusory or reductive ‘real’ arrangement of productive forces makes the demand seem possibilities of health and illness. A more substantial example impossible. would be the running critique of crass political Marxism in Response to an Objection and Concluding Remarks 41 As Marx writes: “If we were to begin with the German status quo itself, even in the only appropriate way, which is negatively, the result would still be an Naturally, there is a Hegelian rejoinder to this anachronism. For even the negation of our political present is already a dusty fact in Adornian line of reasoning. The problem seems to be that our the historical junkroom of modern nations. If I negate powdered wigs, I still have unpowdered wigs.” Germany in 1843 is thus considered to be “beneath the level of history,” i.e., anachronistic, in the specific sense that its actuality and attendant 43 Ibid., §22, 43–45 / 4:48–49. Cf. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 3; possibilities of reform still leave it lagging behind the true actuality of world history. Adorno, GS, 6:15. See too Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’, trans. Annette Jolin and Joseph Manifesto, trans. Samuel Moore (Harmondsworth: Penguin (Pelican), 1967), p. 94; O’Malley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 132, 133. Marx and Engels, MEW, vol. 4, p. 474. 42 Adorno, Minima Moralia, §40, 65; Adorno, GS, 4:72. 44 Ibid., §100, 156 / GS 4:178.

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vision of possibility—what we merely take to be possible—is that we should sometimes find ourselves in a situation where structured in such a way as to rule out certain possibilities as we misrecognize what is possible (or actual or necessary). That unreal, whereas these same possibilities are, in fact, is just the nature of individual consciousness’s one-sidedness actualisable. However, that some epistemic confusion should (Einseitigkeit). arise between the metaphysical priority of actuality and the reactionary defence of the status quo is of almost certainly There is no question that individuals are prone to devoid of philosophical interest, for what mere individual misjudging possibility. However, from an Adornian consciousness takes to be the case or takes to be possible has perspective, the questions we should be asking are the little bearing on the structure of actuality and the real following: why do such misjudgements occur and how is it that possibilities it contains. In fact, individual consciousness often actuality itself seems currently to be organized so as to finds itself on the wrong side of actuality: perpetuate these errors? The ‘real web of illusion’ that Adorno seeks everywhere to undo is for him nothing other than this It may certainly happen that the ideals of individuals are actuality’s global tendency to promote the misrecognition of not realized. Individuals often have their own peculiar unsanctioned possibilities of emancipation as impossibilities. opinions of themselves, of their lofty intentions, of the In this regard, the Hegelian objection does not reach the core splendid deeds they hope to perform, and of their own of the problem, which is that our society as a whole seems supposed importance from which the world, as they think, must assuredly benefit. Be that as it may, such ideas merit burdened by the metaphysical prejudice concerning the no further attention.45 priority of actuality over possibility—a prejudice that cannot but affect our vision of the possible. Philosophically, and The point is this: individual consciousness may be specifically, the fault lies with the extension of the formal mistaken in what it takes to be really possible, in what it takes relation of actuality to possibility into a critique of the ‘ought’ to be the true content of actuality. But such opinions—and the that treats systematically unrealized possibilities of conservatism that they may sometimes inform—nearly emancipation as vain. For Adorno, in at least some cases, if the inevitably remain disconnected from dynamic historical ‘ought’ remains unrealized, it is on account of ideologies that actuality and world spirit, which plays itself out in history in depend, implicitly or explicitly, upon the claim that actuality is spite of our beliefs. (Of course, exceptional errors of judgement a totality exhaustive of possibility and complete in itself. Of may be instructive and philosophically interesting—e.g., course, Adorno accepts the claim that actuality is productive of Antigone or Macbeth—, but only as instances of the power of possibility and that it is, in this way, self-productive. He is not spirit over individual beliefs.) In fact, it is utterly unsurprising a fantasist. But the Hegelian critique of the ‘ought’ cuts too much away; consequently, only those possibilities that become 45 G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction, actual are considered real. Yet among those which do not trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 30; G. W. F. become real are some whose unreality is in fact the sign of a Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, 4 vols. (Hamburg: Felix sham totality. There is, of course, a gap separating Hegel’s view Meiner Verlag, 1955), 1:76.

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from the ideological affirmation that the reproduction of existing conditions is right and good because that is in fact what actuality produces. However, bizarrely, it is made smaller by the relegation of the ‘ought’ to the status of mere formal possibility. Against this relegation, Adorno effectively pleads for an intermediate category unrecognized by Hegel: an ‘ought’ that reduces neither to the pre-sanctioned real possibilities of the status quo, nor to the fantastic unreal possibilities of the imagination gone wild.

Adorno’s heterogeneous ‘more,’ or the ‘middle’ possibility situated between Hegelian formal and real possibilities, is not utopian in the sense of demanding the impossible. It is utopian in the sense of demanding that the social whole not refuse as impossible what does not already exist and agree with actuality. He is not asking us to consider possibilities outside the social whole, but rather those within it that are systematically occluded by metaphysical (as well as other kinds of) prejudice. This is the meaning of Adorno’s “utopia of the whole truth.”

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Works Cited _____. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte. 4 vols. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1955. Adorno, Theodor W. “The Actuality of Philosophy.” In The _____. Werke. 20 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, Adorno Reader. Translated by Benjamin Snow, edited by 1969–1971. Brian O’Connor. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Horkheimer, Max. Gesammelte Schriften. 19 vols. Frankfurt am _____. “Aspects of Hegel’s Philosophy.” In Hegel: Three Studies. Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1988. Translated by Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Cambridge, _____. “On the Problem of Truth.” In Between Philosophy and MA: The MIT Press, 1993. Social Sciences: Selected Early Writings. Translated by _____. Einführung in die Dialektik. Frankfurt am Main: Maurice Goldbloom and G. Frederick Hunter, edited by Suhrkamp Verlag, 2010. G. Frederick Hunter, Matthew S. Kramer and John _____. “The Experiential Content of Hegel’s Philosophy.” In Torpey. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993. Hegel: Three Studies. Translated by Shierry Weber Macdonald, Iain. “Un utopisme modal ? Possibilité et actualité Nicholsen. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993. chez Hegel et Adorno.” In Les normes et le possible : _____. Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by Gretel Adorno, Susan héritage et perspectives de l’École de Francfort, edited by Buck-Morss and Klaus Schultz. 20 vols. Frankfurt am Pierre-François Noppen, Gérard Raulet and Iain Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1997. Macdonald. Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de _____. Minima Moralia. Translated by E. F. N. Jephcott. l’homme, 2013. London: Verso, 1978. Marx, Karl. Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’. Translated _____. Negative Dialectics. Translated by E. B. Ashton. London: by Annette Jolin and Joseph O’Malley. Cambridge: Routledge, 1973. Cambridge University Press, 1970. Bernstein, Jay M. Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics. _____. “Theses on Feuerbach.” In Writings of the Young Marx on Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Philosophy and Society. Translated by Loyd D. Easton Cook, Deborah. “From the Actual to the Possible: Nonidentity and Kurt H. Guddat, edited by Loyd D. Easton and Kurt Thinking.” Constellations vol. 12, no. 1 (2005): 21–35. H. Guddat. Garden City: Doubleday, 1967. Reprint, Hegel, G. W. F. The Encyclopædia Logic: Part I of the Encyclopædia with corrections, Hackett, 1997. of Philosophical Sciences, with the Zusätze. Translated by Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting and H. S. Harris. Translated by Samuel Moore. Harmondsworth: Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991. Penguin (Pelican), 1967. _____. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction. _____. Werke. 43 vols. Berlin: Dietz-Verlag, 1956. Translated by H. B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge Traub, Rainer, and Harald Wieser, eds. Gespräche mit Ernst University Press, 1975. Bloch. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1975. _____. The Science of Logic. Translated by George Di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

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Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by C. K. Ogden. Bilingual. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983.

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